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Al Franken wants your location information to be passed around less

Last week, I spotted Neil Patrick Harris at a ramen restaurant in D.C. and tweeted about it. I immediately felt a little twinge of guilt about ratting out the star's location to my Twitter followers... especially after he looked at his phone and started peering around the tiny restaurant, as if he'd spotted my tweet and was looking for the responsible party. This is one of the downsides of being a public figure in the age of instant public communication; their recognizability makes it harder for them to maintain location privacy. But it's not just the Neil Patrick Harrises of the world who have to worry about their whereabouts being disclosed to third parties by fans; your smartphone is your biggest fan and it's constantly telling apps where you are.

Our smartphone apps are increasingly sucking up information about where we are at any given time in order to improve their operations (to show us the closest ramen restaurant, for example); to support other operations (using aggregate location data from lots of phones to tell us how bad the traffic is to get there); or just to make some cold hard cash off your data (telling all the other businesses near the ramen restaurant that they should be sending you coupons). Free apps say this helps them stay free. But free apps aren't the only ones getting in on the location-data monetization party. Even services you pay for are starting to pass along your location info to interested advertisers. If Verizon is your phone provider of choice, your location data is currently being bundled and sold, unless you've opted out.

Senator Al Franken of Minnesota isn't the hugest fan of the fast and loose economy growing up around our location data, so he's pushing a location privacy bill that would require companies to get your permission to see where you are and then to get explicit permission to provide your whereabouts to third parties (instead of just slipping a clause into their privacy policies that gives them that right). They'd actually have to provide a list of the third parties getting the location lowdown. Franken's bill would also criminalize "cyberstalking apps" -- creepy apps that can be placed on mobile devices that surreptitiously report a phone user's location to another party. He originally presented the bill in 2011. On Thursday, it got the thumbs up from the Senate Judiciary Committee; while it's unlikely to be passed by the end of this session, Franken will be pushing for it to see the light of legislative day in 2013.

"Location information is extremely sensitive information," Franken said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. "Parties with access to this information know what roads you take to work, the church you go to, where you drop your kids at school, and the doctors you go to."

Franken mentioned a recent Federal Trade Commission investigation into smartphone apps aimed at children that found that 12 of the apps were collecting precise geolocation information about the kiddies without getting parental consent. (As concerned as we are about kids' privacy, it's worth noting that one of the exceptions to criminal cyberstalking apps in the bill would be parental monitoring ones that protective adults can use to track their minor children. All other apps would need to give notice when relaying a person's location to another person.)

"If a company wants to give your location to third parties, they need your permission," said Franken.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was a little warier of the crackdown on the location economy.

"The marketplace surrounding mobile apps ... is a complex industry that's still evolving," said Grassley. He expressed concern that the constant location notifications might cause "consumers to revolt" and might result in many free apps having to become fee-based.

He suggested that when apps say to which third parties they're providing your location information they include the categories of companies rather than a list of the actual companies -- many of which you probably wouldn't recognize.

We'll see what 2013 holds for this bill. In the meantime, check out the WSJ's handy (but dated) guide to "what apps know about you" to see which apps on your phone are collecting your location information and which ones are passing it along to third parties. If you're not comfortable with your location being monetized, you might want to take Angry Birds off your phone.